A The Path comic strip…

these were posted at our facebook page by a mysterious girl who calls herself ‘Ruby Red’

🙂 thanks Ruby!

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The Making of Cloud Wolf

And here at last, the last of the wolves. The Cloud Wolf appears, like the weather. He doesn’t mean to hurt anyone, he just is. He is beautiful like a thunderstorm. You can only sit back and admire the destruction he causes.

So indeed in his making I had strong ideas about him. But damn if I can explain anything underlying his part in the game in words.

If I had to pick a ‘favorite’ wolf of my own, it must be the Cloud Wolf. Beyond all words. Every time I see the scene with Rose on the lake tears come to my eyes.

No I don’t know who he is. No one does, least of all her, or me. She aspires to know. She loves. Because pure love is all Rose knows.

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overlays

the overlay effect was originally just a manner to show which character is the focus of attention. it evolved, during beta testing into a way to show which character can interact with which object in the forest as well. We loved the look of double exposure from film photography and film:

still from the movie “Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets (Shuji Terayama, 1971)“

looking at discolorations and glitches of photographic processes were a big influence as well as the false color effects done in movies to connect scenes to moods. i found the colors somehow give much more of a ‘horror’ atmosphere than darkness and grunge did.

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some raw objects

the urns which appear on the living room table in Grandmother’s House after each girl successfully completes the game.

the raven that several of the girls chase on the path. and the wheelchair.

the nest is in the cemetary but the baby bird… have you seen it under the bed in the Children’s room? (when Ginger climbs under there.) I know it’s hard to see. I wish I’d had the skill to make the scenes under the bed more interesting. I wanted something to appear to be chasing you. But we didn’t get to do that.

and the knife. any girl can pick it up and it gives access to the Kitchen of Grandmothers house, where you see it again on the kitchen table. and which I’ve brought up before.

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2 early protoypes

footage from the very very first working prototype of game structure. re-using the girl in white model from 8. shows the way we work. we like to build the game as soon as possible to get a feel for things and then the real design work can begin.

muuuuuch later on. this was a prototype we built to examine character interaction. you can still see the first control interface in this one where characters are directed via buttons on screen. this also contains the experiment we did with a dance game. (i’m still sad we didn’t work that in to the final game somehow.)

there you have it. two ugly game prototypes. it’s all part of the process.

   Anniversary,Reflections,wip    3 Comments

Introducing: The Path Archive

tag: apartment

Well, really its just a set we’re uploading on Flickr. It contains treasured bits and pieces from our computers from the development of the game. Sketches, screenshots, little movies, whatever.

Part 2 of our ongoing postmortem is about the design of the game and some of the process we went through to get to what The Path became. The archive is the same story in images.

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do they?

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postmortem

click to see a larger version

The “making of” tale of The Path has begun. 😉 We begin with a timeline. you can read it here.

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Insight.

Hello Path blog. It has been awhile. Well, if you are following along here, over the next 10 days you are in for a treat! And I hope more people will gather ’round.
If you enjoyed The Path or were curious about The Path you may find some interesting insights. We will be sharing with you: never before released materials for your visual pleasure, a post-mortem “making of” feature where we give details on how the game was made. Interviews we’ve done with people who inspired some of our design work on the game. And an important announcement! or two! oh and whatever else comes up… who knows! Anyway, have a seat, follow along on twitter, our facebook page or this blog’s rss feed for updates.

Let me read you a story…

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A story of a girl in a forest

Just found this. Not sure when it was published. A lovely story by Heather Chaplin of her adventures in The Path. Well worth the read!

For me, The Path is about what a remarkably fine line it is that separates childhood from adulthood, innocence from cynicism, and how utterly not black-and-white most things in life are. It’s about the fact that, as much as we might like to believe otherwise, sometimes the places that should be the safest — figuratively, childhood and literally Grandma’s house — are actually the most dangerous; that sex can be both brutal and transcendendant; that females, at all stages of their girlhood, are vulnerable in a very particular way; and that there’s a certain inevitability to that vulnerability — no one gets through life without growing up. And sometimes growing up can be an experience that leaves you crumpled and nearly broken on the ground.

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